


5:38

by moodyrebelmage



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Breakfast in Bed, Dad!Cullen, F/M, Fluff, Kid Fic, Modern Thedas, kissing day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 06:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8568124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyrebelmage/pseuds/moodyrebelmage
Summary: Another entry for TheSecondSeal's Kissing Day Festival! Cullen and daughter prepare a surprise holiday breakfast for his wife. Fluff ensues.





	

The tingling sense of eyes in the dark dragged him from his dreams. Cullen didn’t need to open his to know who it was, but he did anyway, assessing as best he could through the shadows whether or not this was an emergency. He tapped his phone for light, and the screen mocked him, illuminating her small round face with the numbers “5:38.”

“Go back to bed, Flora.”

“Shhhhhhhhhh.”

Her shushing was comically loud, but at this hour nothing short of apocalypse would wake her mother.

“You said we could make mama breakfast.”

“Your mother won’t wake up for hours yet. Go back to bed.”

“It’s supposed to be a surprise, daddy. We need to make it when she’s sleeping, like in the commercials.”

Wide amber eyes stared into his own from inches away; his daughter had long perfected the art of using distance for emphasis. Rolling back onto his pillow with a sigh, Cullen knew she had defeated him. She knew it, too. Three year olds were perceptive like that.

Taking her hand, he rolled onto the floor and together they stole out of the room, dancing down the wooden stairs in an intricate pattern learned through years of avoiding creaks that could wake a baby.

“What would you like to make?”

“Eggs, sausage, yogurt, pancakes with pumpkins. Maybe some oatmeal and muffins. And mac and cheese.”

“Pick three things, Flora. Three, and we’ll make them.”

“Pancakes with pumpkins, eggs, and sausage,” she said. “But I want to do the eggs.”

She clattered around in the cupboard beneath the cutting board, tugging her pan of choice out from beneath two heavier pans and doing her best to wake the Titans in the process. They gathered the ingredients for the pancakes together, and for a full thirty seconds, she was content whisking with him. Then, without warning, she climbed down from her step stool and announced she was going to look for decorations, leaving the rest of the frying to him.

“Don’t do the eggs, though,” she warned him with an ominous glare.

The shadows in the kitchen shortened as silver light washed through the window above the sink. Bubbles of dew curved along the bottom of the panes, blocking his view of the fog hanging low over his wife’s garden. He leaned his hip against the counter next to the stove, ladling spoonfuls of batter into the frying pan. While the coins began to bubble, he poured boiling water over fresh grounds and into the beaker below, the scent of coffee and pumpkin and butter and spice filling his lungs and rising ever so slowly to Elodie’s pillow.

Flora dashed into the room, dropping a dozen frosted, crunchy maple leaves on the kitchen table.

“Where did you get those?” he called after her, but she was already off again. He listened carefully for any sign of her opening the sliding door, but heard only faint rustlings in the living room. The click clack of the pup’s nails on the stairs brought her back just long enough to dig a biscuit from the mabari-shaped ceramic jar on the counter.

Cullen flipped the second round of pancakes onto their other sides, the low hum of frying batter an unexpected, homey comfort that even six years before he might not have noticed at all.

In some ways, it felt like seconds ago. Every minute since Flora’s birth had gone by almost before he could register he was awake at all. The days flew by, but they had been filled with a lifetime, until he could scarcely recognize the terse, uncertain man he used to be. It wasn’t strictly about Flora, of course, or Elodie for that matter; time alone brought its own growth, but their presence in his life had removed enough of the uncertainty to grant him a clearer view of the path he wanted to take.

But this was too heavy for a lazy Sunday morning.

Well, not lazy. Not anymore. Kissing Day had once been a quiet affair, slower, and certainly later in the day. Early on, when their relationship was still too new for grander gestures, they celebrated on her couch, snuggled under a pallet of chenille, fleece, and llama wool. Elodie would fill the slow cooker with her favorite cocoa recipe and they would order take out and tie themselves in knots until they were drunk on chocolate and each other. It became something of a tradition after that, until Flora was born.

“Can I do the eggs yet?” Her eyes could just be seen over the other side of the counter. A year before, nothing but her mess of curls had reached the top.

“Not yet.”

She dashed back out, leaving one of the purple plastic cups from her _Witch of the Wilds_ tea set on the table next to the leaves. Cullen poured the third and final batch of coins into the pan and knelt down to tug another heavy pot out from the cupboard.

His wife wasn’t famously organized, but her cookbooks were immaculate. The cocoa recipe she had routinely prepared was once just a scrap of paper tucked into a neat floral box, but it had since made it into the second of her published books, released into the public even as she herself had grown too busy to use it. It was too late for the slow cooker now, but the pot would do for a rush job.

Flora returned, this time with a sheet of paper folded into some kind of unidentifiable polygon, with blue and purple scribble marks covering the front and inside. _Markers._ Where had she found those?

Rather than ruin the mood by seeking out whatever inevitable mess the three year old had left in her wake, he reminded her to put the caps back on and then called her back to help him gather the ingredients for the cocoa. Milk, cream, cocoa powder, chocolate chips, cinnamon and sugar, and, because everything grows with time, even hot chocolate recipes, marshmallows.

“You said I could only pick three things,” she pointed out.

“The cocoa is from me.”

“But can I please have some?”

“When it’s finished,” he chuckled, “we’ll all have some.”

“Alright, good.”

While she hadn’t been interested in the frying process, she was a dedicated stirrer. She waddled up to the stove, giant wooden nug in hand, and stepped up to watch the chocolate swirl. It was a good ten minutes before the milk was hot enough to properly melt the chocolate, not an insignificant amount of time to a toddler, but the rich aroma of dark cocoa and cinnamon was enough to slow her down. They stirred until foam formed a ring around the pot, the wooden spoon leaving a smooth, rolling wake through the thickening drink.

“Now can I do eggs?” she asked as he turned the burner beneath the chocolate off.

“Now we can do eggs.”

Bubbling butter slid across the griddle, salt filling the air. Cullen dropped sausage links on the back half, then brought five eggs out to cook in shifts at the front. Flora beamed. She was still new to egg cracking; her mother and uncle had allowed her to help once or twice during their recent baking adventures, but although she was meticulous about the rules - tap it gently against an edge, split it at the crack with her fingertips, watch for shell pieces - her hands were still so small. He pulled a ramekin from the cupboard so they could remove any shells before transferring it to the griddle.

The sizzle was deafening in the quiet dawn lit hour. It was only a matter of time now before the sounds and scents of the morning drew Elodie from their bed, so he sent Flora to collect a tray from the closet and began plating their meals.

“I brought a cup for mama,” Flora said, handing him the tiny purple witch cup. “I have more so we can match.”

The cup held less than a shot’s worth, but he dutifully filled it and set it among the fiery leaves she had so carefully arranged around the tray. Full mugs were also poured, and tucked away next to the warm stove for later. Rustling was heard above. Father and daughter used their last minutes to arrange a mass of blankets across the couch, fuzzy alternating with knit alternating with heavy woven throws. They set the breakfast tray on the coffee table and Flora snatched the card she had made and dashed to meet her mother at the bottom of the stairs.

“Close your eyes!” she cried.

Elodie gave a muffled, sleepy laugh as she creaked down in her socks, sweats, and floppy cardigan. Realizing too late that this was something more than the average morning, she tugged desperately at her bed head, crooked, frizzy curls flying loosely around her face.

“Close your eyes!” Flora repeated. At the bottom of the stairs, she accommodated, only to hear a split second later: “Alright, now open them!”

Her daughter leapt into her arms before she could take anything in. Elodie peaked at Cullen over her shoulder and smiled.

Golden shafts of light broke through the windows, spreading across the cozy nest they had built. The dog wobbled into the living room and collapsed with a huff in a beam on the rug. Cullen pulled the blankets back as his wife approached, and she and the toddler snuggled into the burrow.

“Do I smell cocoa?” she asked.

He handed her the tiny cup. Her brow arched, confused at first, and then so clearly offended by the size of the offering that he had to bite his cheek to contain a laugh, lest he also offend the toddler. Elodie sipped slow and deliberate, maintaining perfect, disgruntled eye contact until the entirety of the shot was in her mouth. She held it there until they both broke and she had to clutch her face to avoid spitting it back out at him.

With an exaggerated swallow, she leaned forward and grabbed his shirt, stretching it until he flopped onto the couch beside them. He nestled under the blankets, the familiar weight of them all together casting his thoughts back once more to those early days of caboodling. Times and traditions had changed, but hardly for the worse.

Cullen moved the tray onto his lap, opening up the coffee table for their socked feet. Flora climbed into her mother’s arms. Elodie planted a kiss on the child’s temple and then captured his mouth with chocolatey lips.

“Eww,” Flora said.

Her mother laughed, handing her her own tiny cup. The girl sipped it, then scooted toward the table to set it down, picking up her mother’s plate instead. Cullen leaned forward to help when the sausages began to wobble in transport. She placed it under Elodie’s nose.

“I did the eggs.”


End file.
